• How three Abuja residents killed selves in one week
By Abubakar Yakubu, Abuja
Within the past few months, three middle-aged persons in Abuja terminated their lives in very strange circumstances that left many people in shock.
One of them, Ukanwa Emmanuel, a middle-aged Tiv from Benue State, lived at Dagbana Estate in Jikwoyi, Abuja, where he operated a fairly thriving barbing and laundry business called Kula Barbing/Laundry.
He was married and said to worship at the Redeemed Christian Church of God in the area, where he also served as a Sunday school teacher.
But life turned around for Emmanuel when his mother died at the tail end of September. Thereafter, he started behaving abnormally.
His neighbour, Peter Isaiah, said Emmanuel started wailing that his mother was dead and went into a depressed state.
“He no longer took care of his body and looked unkempt,” Isaiah said.
Another neighbour, Ngozi Eze, said before his mother died, Emmanuel was a well-organised man, who looked plump and well kept.
“In fact, he was very presentable, but after the news of his mother’s death, things turned upside down for him. He no longer maintained his body and whenever he passed my shop, I turned my face away not to see him as his body was frail and he wasn’t looking good,” she said.
She said some customers who patronised Emmanuel’s shops tried to assist him by donating money to him, but he was still not happy, adding that he first attempted to jump into a well near his residence but was stopped by neighbours.
According to her, Emmanuel made a second suicide attempt when he tried to ingest a poisonous liquid on October 6 but was stopped by neighbours again.
Four days later, on October 10, according to her, he woke up in the morning and opened another sniper.
“His wife tried to prevent him from taking the substance but he pushed her away and consumed it immediately,” she said.
Eze said Emmanuel’s wife raised the alarm and this attracted neighbours who rushed him to Nyanya General Hospital, where he was confirmed dead. She explained further that his corpse was returned to a garden in Jikwoyi, where members of the community around the area donated money and transported it home for burial.
She said one of his relatives, a policeman, inspected the scene of the incident and also went along with his body to the hospital.
Speaking about burial rites in Tiv land for women, Dr Mathew N. Zatto, a don at the Benue State University, said if the dead woman is the most senior in the community, the child would have to kill a cow and spend about N2 million.
He said such a woman is seen as the mother of the community and her burial is always glamorous.
Another Tiv indigene, who simply called himself David, argued that if actually Emmanuel’s mother was the most senior female in the community, he could have negotiated with the elders in the community instead of taking his life and causing problems for his family.
David reasoned further that other relatives of the deceased person could have also assisted Emmanuel in the funeral preparations as the woman also had brothers and sisters who could have mustered the necessary resources.
The evening of the same day Emmanuel died, one Adame Adam posted on Facebook the gory photograph of another man who hanged himself at Bwari, in the Federal Capital Territory.
She wrote the following below the picture: “Someone committed suicide this morning at Bwari, Abuja. Presently the corpse is at the mountain behind Catholic Hospital at Deeper Life road in Bwari.
“Please let us take life easy. We know that things are hard and let us also be our brother’s keeper. Let’s help ourselves while we are alive as many men are no longer sleeping at night because of thinking,” she added.
Another suicide was recorded when a resident at Jikwoyi Phase 1 in Abuja, Okoye Jacob, who was in his mid-fifties, slit his throat in the early hours of the following Tuesday, right in the presence of his three children, aged 13, 10 and seven years.
Before he took the fatal decision, according to neighbours, Jacob’s wife had given birth a month ago to a premature child, who was placed in an incubator at a hospital. Ngozi Amaechi, a resident in the area, said the man’s wife had stroke afterwards and had to be taken to their village in Enugu State, while Jacob, who trades at Wuse Market, stayed behind to monitor the progress of the premature child in the hospital and to look after the other children.
“His landlady was supportive, because during week days his children stayed with her after school period and he kept his key with her so that the children could go into the apartment to eat or drink water.
Things, according to Amaechi, took a turn for the worse for Jacob, when he came home one day and told the landlady that people called him a thief and came to search his house.
She said the landlady listened to him and told him such an incident never happened as she was at home throughout that day.
“Even the chairman of the Wuse Market association called to calm him down and when he was calm, he told us that they were no longer accusing him of theft and we all went to sleep,” she said.
However, she narrated, in the wee hours of Tuesday, Jacob’s 13 year-old daughter rushed out of their apartment to bang on the burglary protector of the landlady to inform her that her father was killing himself.
“The landlady passed through the back of her apartment to meet the daughter and she along with some of the tenants in the compound forced the door open and saw that Jacob had already slit his throat and was bleeding profusely,” Amaechi said.
She said Jacob was rushed in an unconscious state to a nearby hospital and later transferred to National Hospital Abuja, where he spent some few days and died.
At the Jikwoyi Police Station a police officer, who is not authorised to speak to the press, confirmed the incident and said that a policeman was sent to the compound where Jacob lived to investigate the circumstances of his death.
“The man’s senior daughter, who is 13 years old and witnessed the unfortunate incident, was questioned and she gave her statement on how her father committed suicide,” the officer said.
Commenting on the suicide acts, Superintendent Ibrahim Onipe (retired), who described the three deaths as unfortunate, advised neighbours of such suicide-prone persons to alert the police so that their lives could be saved.
He said when the police receive such reports, they pick up the victim for protection and later investigate what led him to contemplate such action, before sending him/her for mental evaluation and cure in a hospital.
The former police officer disclosed that in most times, after such victims meet with the police, they renew hope to live. He, however, warned that any person who angrily dares such persons to commit suicide has committed a crime. “Section 228 of the Penal Code Law states that if any person commits suicide, whoever abets the commission of such act shall be punished with a jail term of 10 years or liable to a fine.”
FCT Police Command’s spokesperson, Superintendent Josephine Adeh was not on her desk when our reporter called at her office but one of her post on X described attempted suicide as an offence which runs contrary to sections 231, 111 and 114 of the Penal Code Act.
The spokesperson, who reacted to the case involving one Shuaibu Yushau, a man who attempted suicide by climbing a 120-foot broadcast mast in Abuja on July 8, said the police had taken him to the Social Development Secretariat for mental evaluation, adding that if found mentally stable after the test, he would be charged to court for attempted suicide, disturbance of public peace and incitement.
Also commenting on the issue, Barrister Nnaemeka Ejiofor, a human rights lawyer, condemned the act of suicide and described it as a defeatist approach to life.
“Suicide is not a crime because as at the time a person kills himself, there is no one to present for trial,” he said.
He said the law, however, recognises attempted suicide as a crime, adding that when people commit suicide, they create more problems for their family as they leave behind the stigma as well as deprive them of their companionship,
While reacting to the bizarre suicide acts, Dr Wisdom Ihejieto, a consultant/public health physician as well as the immediate past chairman of the Guild of Medical Directors, FCT Chapter, said the cases of those that committed suicide recently are classical examples of narratives that could suggest the pressures on the mental health on individuals presently.
He explained that the World Health Organisation describes health as not only the absence of physical disease conditions but a general state of physical, social, mental and emotional wellbeing.
According to him, due to the present economic situation in all parts of the globe, Nigeria not being an exception, a lot of people can no longer cope with all the stress that the present economic situation puts on them, making them take the easy but wrongful way out.
“Especially in Nigeria where there is unemployment and poor wage system, all these cumulatively have adverse effect on the mental health of most Nigerians and lead to psychological effects, depression; which might go to suicidal tendencies and sometimes could lead to advanced psychiatric tendencies like psychoses schizophrenia.
“It is unfortunate that the pressure which could be emotional, financial, family as well as pressure to meet basic needs of people to their respective families like school fees, house rents, which are all increasing and it is becoming extremely difficult for most people to meet such simple basic needs and responsibilities to their families, and this leads to unfortunate collapse in the mental health of such people,” the physician posited.
He said the use of organophosphorous agents like sniper becomes handy in such people with depressed mental health, noting that for them it is seen as an easy way out.
According to him, to alleviate extreme conditions and see a reduction in the use of such suicidal agents, there must be a holistic process of reducing the economic pressures on most Nigerians.
“This can be done by the government improving their social benefits programmes and also thinking out of the box in reducing the cost of food materials, transportation cost, creating some form of subsidy on essentially all levels of social interventions,” he stressed.
He advised government agencies to increase sensitisation on the need for people to look after their mental health.
“Job creation and improved wages for those working could help in this direction and this could be done by creating farm settlements in all parts of the country as this will alleviate the hunger that is ravaging most Nigerians. There is also the need for more social interaction by families to their loved ones that they have not heard from for a long period.
“Family members who are relatively wealthy should not stop assisting those who are below the ladder in the economic triangle.
“Religious leaders and traditional rulers have a big role to play in alleviating the stress on the mental health of Nigerians by constantly using motivational and positive messages that could put light at the end of the tunnel,” he added.
Also commenting on suicide attempts in an article entitled ‘Urgent Call to Decriminalise Suicidal Attempts: Abuja Incident as a Reminder,’ Dr Jibril Abdulmalik, while quoting a World Health Organisation’s report, stated that one million people intentionally take their own lives every year, which translates to one suicide death every 40 seconds.
“Suicide is preventable and everyone who attempts it needs urgent help and not punishment. But our extant law in Nigeria disagrees,” he said.
According to him, the current criminal code, in Chapter 27, Section 327 of Nigeria states that ‘any person who attempts to kill himself is guilty of a misdemeanor and is liable to imprisonment for one year.
“Unfortunately, Nigeria remains one of the few remaining countries that still criminalise attempted suicide, instead of recognising it as a cry for help and occurring frequently against the backdrop of mental ill-health – especially depression,” he argued.